Barbie Goes to Washington

Our dear state delegate Jeff Eldridge has introduced a bill to ban Barbie from being sold in WV on the grounds that she causes little girls to develop self esteem problems.

Sigh.

This is hardly a new argument. In fact, one of the best places to read about it is a book called The Barbie Chronicles (back when she turned 40 instead of this year's 50). It has various personal essays on whether Barbie did or did not cause a change to the self esteem of little girls. Bottom line? Too inconclusive to legislate against. Some people do seem disturbed by Barbie. Some people are disturbed at her proportions, which are truly out of whack. I can't find the original source, but I've seen displays that suggest if she were a "real" person, she'd be 7 ft 2 inches and have a neck twice the size of a normal human; her measurements would be: 39-23-33. If a real woman were to have Barbie's proportions (in ratio to human measurements) she would likely have to walk on all fours in order to move. Some women who wrote essays in that book were disturbed by her lack of actual body parts, like, say, nipples. They found her creepy. Some women were disturbed by her grotesque feet, permanently carved into high heel shape (four inch heels, of course).

I will tell you my own Barbie story.

I discovered Barbie when I was about eight or nine years old in the mid to late 80s. I got my first Barbies because they were my cousin's castoffs. I thought they were friggin awesome. For me, they were stand ins for "real life", a way of working out fantasies of adulthood. I was the primary audience for the Barbie slogan I remember: We girls can do anything, right Barbie? To me, Barbie was the first feminist I remember. She was liberated--only later did she conform to having a family, and then she did whatever she wanted to, and the kids were accepted into her jobsite and vacation plans (at least when we were playing with them). She had a variety of jobs, and even if you only had one Barbie, you could get her business suits, doctor's clothes and accessories, pretty much whatever you wanted. Sister and I collected Barbies, and eventually we had a Barbie village on the top floor of our playhouse our dad built for us. It was the size of a very small apartment.

It was Barbie Universe.

I made Barbie condominiums to go with the few Barbie houses we had inherited from this same cousin. And you know what? They all had jobs. Because we had lots of Barbies, and they could do anything--all at once. When we Played Barbie, which was a very serious event that took most of the weekend, they all went to work. The Barbie kids went to school where there was a teacher for them. There was a Barbie DJ who ran the radio station (she sat on top of the radio we had out there). I put out a Barbie magazine that fit in all their little Barbie plastic stiff hands. All Barbies got a copy, and it was illustrated. Barbies provided beauty services, and all Barbies could expect to get a haircut at least once. I made a movie theater out of a shoebox, turned on its side with slits cut in either end; I stapled panels of paper together and drew pictures on each panel, and then wrote a script and fed the paper in one end of the shoebox and pulled it out the other while reading the script. Sister absolutely loved it, but it took me all day to make a "movie." We were also racially integrated in Barbie Universe. We realized early on that our town was too "white." So, we purposely went out and bought black Barbies and a Barbie we thought was more or less Latina (although I think she was supposed to be Hawaian Barbie or "Midge" or something). We had Barbie politicians. Barbie "business women". One Barbie was a landlord. Some Barbies were stay at home moms.

Kens, however, weren't very well represented in Barbie Universe. They dated the other Barbies, but the Barbies regularly tossed them out of the condominiums or fired them because they were lazy. If I recall correctly, Ken dominated the servant industry, usually chauferring Tycoon Barbie (one was really rich and did something with "stock" although we weren't really sure what that even meant) around in the pink Corvette. We had one Stay at Home Dad Ken--I believe he was the husband of Tycoon Barbie, so she could go get some real work done. Sometimes Barbies fought over a Ken (banging said dolls together until one's head popped off--that meant Victory), but they soon realized that Ken wasn't worth it, and then both Barbies kicked him out of both apartments, and he was left to fend for himself. He was usually very apologetic, but he had to move on and find a different Barbie, because the last two weren't interested anymore. Our Kens were also racially diverse, and all Barbies and Kens dated based on personality (which they all had clearly defined personalities) rather than race. A year ago I found a legal document we had written up (it fits into plastic Barbie hands, too) and put in a "safe place". It was a divorce paper, signed "Barbie." Fuck you, Ken.

Barbie was everything at once, like a Hindu god with multiple faces. She did everything, because we believed we could do anything. Not because Barbie told us we could, but because our Daddy did (who was nothing like Ken, but feared we might end up with the version of Ken we tossed around the playhouse). So we played with Barbie based on our own previously established self esteem. Barbie play was a manifestation of our own self worth, not the maker of it.

I didn't have a problem with Barbie not having nipples. Why? Because she was a fucking toy. Toys aren't supposed to be exactly like real life. If anything, Ken's genitals were the more confusing thing. Have you ever seen a Ken doll undressed? It makes Barbie's lack of holes highly forgiveable.

So, leave Barbie the hell alone. If you want to go after something, go after those Bratz dolls. They're the stripper whores of the Barbie Universe.

-- DV